Over 25 feature-length and short films, including three which are have been nominated for an Oscar, will be shown in the 17th annual Bermuda International Film Festival.

The Festival runs from March 21 to 27 at the Liberty Theatre.

This year’s programme is themed “Global Visions” with the widest film selection geographically in the history of the event.

The World Cinema category comprises offerings from Chile, Egypt and Japan, alongside the filmmaking powerhouses of the USA and UK and homegrown talent from Bermuda.

As usual there are both narrative features and documentaries across a broad range of subjects which, says the BIFF, will “make you laugh and cry, and everything in between.”

It festival starts with the critically-acclaimed “Le Week-End,” a British film set in Paris. It stars Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan as a fifty-something couple returning to the city of love, in which they honeymooned, in an attempt to rejuvenate their marriage.

The three Oscar-nominated films are “Missing Picture,” “Omar” and “The Square.”

“The Missing Picture”, made in Cambodia, recounts director Rithy Panh’s firsthand experience of suffering at the hands of Pol Pot’s communist regime.

“Omar”, competing for Best Foreign Film, is a tense, gripping thriller about betrayal, suspected and actual, in the occupied territories of Palestine.

“The Square” about the Egyptian revolution is up for the Best Documentary gong.

The narrative line-up within the World Cinema strand also includes “Gloria” with Paulina Garcia as a women who realises she can shine brighter than ever in her golden years; “Like Father Like Son” a family drama about a child switched at birth, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes Film Festival last year; “Abuse of Weakness” a French film depicting a women taken advantage of by a career con man as she recovers from a brain haemorrhage; and “The Double,” the latest offering from director Richard Ayoade who scooped the Audience Choice Award at BIFF 2011 with the celebrated “Submarine.”

Documentaries screening at BIFF are: “Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq” about the most transcendent young ballerina of all time, who was tragically struck down and paralysed at the age of 27 by polio; “Finding Vivian Maier” telling the story of a mysterious nanny now considered one of the best street photographers of all time; and “The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden,” a true-crime Darwin meets Hitchcock story about murder on the uninhabited Floreana Island.

The mid-point of the festival is marked with a Gala Presentation of “The French Minister.” This off-the-wall comedy about French politics is based on the award-winning graphic novel by Abel Lanzac, a former government speech writer. The film has been widely praised for its rapid-fire dialogue and a brilliant ensemble cast.

Our From the Onion Patch strand once more showcases Bermudian cinematic talent with three films: Ben Watson’s “Downing’s Wreck” documentary about Bermuda’s most famous shipwreck, Sea Venture; Robert Zuill’s documentary “An Ancient Window” also about a shipwreck that tells the tale of early Bermuda; and Gareth Fletcher Pit Bull dog documentary, “Bullied Breeds,” completes these category.

As BIFF is one of only a small number of Academy Award Qualifying festivals for the Short Film — Live Action Oscar, there will once again be a diverse line-up of high quality short films from all around the world. This year 16 shorts will screen in competition at BIFF 2014 for the coveted Bermuda Shorts award within three packages.

More laughs will be provided by the Gala Presentation of “Alan Partridge” to close the festival. The Steve Coogan returns in his BBC television comic creation of Alan Partridge, a broadcaster at the edge of his own sanity.

The conceited, petty and anal Partridge is in the centre of a siege as a radio DJ colleague holds the station hostage after learning he is getting fired.

Further information about each film and more detailed synopses are available in the BIFF 2014 online guide on www.biff.bm, which launches today.

Tickets will go on sale on the website when the BIFF 2014 Box Office opens next Monday, March 3.

BIFF patrons and sponsors will be contacted directly and offered priority access to purchase tickets in recognition of their support.